just caught up with the race today after being out all day yesterday. Crazy. Gutted for hamilton. Through out the race i was calling vettel all names under the sun, and when he seemed to slow through the hangar straight, and then pulled over i went nuts.

I had found myself thinking over the last couple of races "a vettel incident wold liven up the championship", but immediately the angel on my shoulder would pipe up "if you're wishing misfortune on someone to even out the championship, they probably deserve to be leading the championship"

The car is part of the package though and sometimes that has to mess up. can't say i was too upset for him at the time, understand his pain but enjoying the prospect of a potentially closer championship battle more.

On the tyres - can't agree with Gary "make it up" Anderson. Seems like a more complex issue than just T4 and those kerbs are not shonky they're pretty standard fare.

I thought Gary Anderson was pointing to tyres being dragged sideways across a very sharp outside kerb edge, combined with the Pirelli tyres having weak and vulnerable side-walls, and possibly the low psi as well?

While the buck obviously stops with them I think that Pirelli will get more flak than they deserve for this. As others have said they have to work within the bounds set by the FIA, and then deal with whiny fans and even whinier team principles with no capacity to test with current cars on a variety of circuits. Then teams run the tyres on the absolute limits of the guidelines set by Pirelli (or even beyond, as Red Bull did with their camber a while ago) and then you end up with tyres blowing up.

I think that Anderson's interpretation of the causes was plausible. His technical insights generally seem pretty solid to me; he only seems to talk bollocks when he's predicting the future.

shamblemonkee wrote:
@meggsy well possibly but those kerbs were the same last year. but the fact that the failures were not alll at t4 leads me to beleive its a little more complicated.

I think damage was also reported on the tyres of Vettel and Alonso, only theirs did not fail. What's consistent is that it was always the left tyres failing or damaged. 'cut' was the term Anderson used.

On a different note, and apologies if this as ridiculous as it sounds, but does anyone think the powers that be at RB gimp Webber's car for the starts to reduce the risk of interfering with Vettel's race?

The tyres are a massive issue as just proven in the previous race. Merc are justified in having done the tyre test and still teams argue over whether to improve the tyres or not.

Young driver test is just that. Young drivers. That is mercs punishment (missing the YD test). Further tyre tests with race drivers and current cars can be conducted for the benefit of all the teams at a later date.

Pirelli still not signed a new contract yet? They may just be holding off until it is so late in the season that the FIA and Bernie will have to accept whatever they say. Which may just be unbreakable tyres.